لن نحاسب، سننتقم
[We will not hold them accountable, we shall take revenge]

by Marie-Nour Hechaime

In the aftermath of the August 4 explosions, one of the slogans that caught my attention invoked revenge, rather than demanding accountability. As our pain and rage became more intense, symbolic nooses and mock gallows would come to replace previous calls for prosecution of Lebanon’s political leaders. Speculation pushes us to imagine systems that can accommodate contradictions without collapsing. Carefully-crafted legal systems work this way too, giving meaning and frames for social fictions to co-exist. Growing up in a family of law practitioners, and having studied law myself, I often used to approach the legal corpus as if it communicated absolute rules. And when justice would fail to deliver, I’d assume it were because the legal battle had not been rightfully fought, and thus not won yet.

Only later did I start questioning the pillars of our society – as well as investigating the legal foundations populating my own knowledge, studies, and imaginary. Could some of them be extended and manipulated, so that the balance of imperatives – the golden rule of legal reasoning – can incorporate other values than the ones upheld by late capitalist societies? How did notions like ‘legal personhood’ and ‘limitation of jurisdiction’ become the gateway for multinational corporations to evade liability? How does the knowledge we deploy as legislators, legal practitioners, and judges reproduce the status quo rather than safeguard community interests against the all-too powerful? How is access to the justice system negated and denied? And, who gets to be heard and how are narratives framed within judicial settings?

Within the past decades, many contemporary artists have made use of aesthetic forms and cultural resources to push for alliances and carry struggles forward. When needed, artists have also delved into fictions to create and nurture shared imaginaries. Some have tried their luck at speculative legal practices – setting up special courts and tribunals to examine abstract issues or to address concrete cases that have yet to be acknowledged; re-thinking evidentiary standards and forensic science; or turning the legislative process upside down to implement a bottom-up approach. For this iteration of aashra, I am choosing to focus on ten works that have, each in their own way, challenged dominant discourses and mechanisms by which legality is framed and produced. To critically or playfully engage with the language of the law – even when in makeshift spaces made for and by us - might finally open room for justice and reparations.